


Worth Mining

by meredyd



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/pseuds/meredyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first one. The thought makes Elsa’s stomach drop. There are so many others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth Mining

“Are you sure you’re okay doing this alone? Because I can come with you! If you need, like, anything. Kristoff and I will be right outside with the sleigh.”

“Anna.”

“And we brought snacks, so maybe if you get tired of doing ice stuff, you can come hang out, or just leave, and —“

“Anna. It’s fine.”

Anna bites her lip in that way Elsa is starting to understand means “No, it’s probably not” and she pats her sister’s hand lightly. 

“And if it’s not, this is just the first one.” 

The first one. The thought makes Elsa’s stomach drop. There are so many others.

 

The girl’s name is Lady Joanna Patterson, and she lives in a manor house not too far from the palace. Kristoff convinced her it made sense to start small, to go to the farms and rural villages after the population of her immediate kingdom trusted what she was doing. 

Anna had gone ahead and spoken to Joanna’s family, (the literal icebreaker, she had said) ingratiating herself with them so quickly and thoroughly that “The Queen herself is going to visit your daughter” became something a little less fantastic for them to swallow. 

“They’re sweet,” Anna said, although she said this about everyone. “They just don’t know what to do, kind of like our—She’s twelve, and has an older sister and a brother. The water glasses at dinner kept freezing and shattering whenever somebody important came to visit. I couldn’t find out much more than that.”

“Twelve…she was cursed, then?” Elsa said, tired. Anna’s bedroom was a mess of papers, a white-haired doll she is sewing for the girl perched half finished on her writing desk. 

“Probably. There’s no way to find out for sure.”

Now, Elsa opens the door, and the housemaid leads her to Lady Joanna’s room. 

She’s a young-looking twelve, with plump rosy cheeks and pale blonde hair that falls in soft waves and doesn’t match her eyebrows. She sits quietly on the bed, spine straight and perceptibly frightened, forgetting for a moment to rise and bow. 

“Your Highness."

“There’s no need for that,” Elsa says. “We’re to be friends, Joanna. So please, sit, and call me Elsa.”

“I like your gloves,” Joanna finally says, after several long moments of awkward silence. “They’re very pretty.”

“I like yours too,” says Elsa. “But you don’t need to wear them when you’re with me.”

Joanna shakes her head. “I do, though. You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” 

Elsa takes Joanna’s offered hands and helps her remove them, red silk with cream rosemaling on the edges, one finger at a time. And then her heart catches in her throat and the world seems to be falling away.

“Mum and Dad say you’re going to help, Your Highness, but you can’t. I’m not stupid.”

“No,” Elsa says. “You’re not. But I want you to watch something for me before you decide anything else.”

The queen sweeps her hands in front of her in a trail of snow, bright and blue and white, crystallizing into intricate geometric patterns of flowers that look more soft and real than cold. She brings them down lightly as a sheet of fabric until they cover Joanna’s lap and twist into her hair and fall from the ceiling. 

Joanna holds out her hands for them and they don’t clatter at all when they hit her skin, frozen solid up to the elbows. Elsa chides herself for expecting them to.

-

“Sounds like it went as well as it could,” Kristoff says. He helpfully passes Elsa another glass of akvavit. “I’d like to meet this kid.”

“ _You_ would you like _meet_ someone,” Anna says. She’s sitting perched in their father’s enormous armchair with her legs tucked beneath her, unbraiding Elsa’s hair. 

“Don’t be cruel, Anna. He gets along with people when he wants to.”

“He gets along with _you!_ That doesn’t count!”

Kristoff ignores them. Elsa nudges her sister gently as she leans backward.

“We can invite her to come visit!” says Anna, bouncing. “We can invite all the girls to come visit and have a huge party, with games, ooh, maybe a ball. A sleepover ball! Is that a thing?”

“I don’t think it will be quite that easy,” Elsa says. “And we might need to start a bit smaller.”

“But we’ll try?”

“Yes,” says Elsa. “We’ll try."

 


End file.
